Pivot

by L C Barlow

  I reached for his arm and pressed lightly across his creamy skin, on his blue vein, watching it puff up ever-so-slightly, knowing that soon it would be torn.

  "One day we won't be anonymous," he told me. "One day we'll talk about my Father and Mother and God, and the people you knew and know now. Where you came from. And all the..."

  "Trauma," I finished for him, and the weight of the word drew my eyes across his bare chest and to his face.

  "trauma, yes. We'll spend days talking. The outside world will disappear. Not a single lie will be told, and things won't feel so stagnant. It'll be quick - a rush - and then it can never be like we never knew each other."

  I pressed again on his vein. "Yes."

  He shook his head. "If I could trap you in this room and force from you that knowledge, I would Jack, but you won't tell me, so, for now, we're at an impasse. Now, if I could please have my vein back, I'm going to make it a very happy vein."

  I let his arm go. "If you were a drug," I said, "you would be an upper."

  "Why thank you," and he sat upright, grabbing a lighter, a spoon, and cotton.

  I touched the hand that held the syringe. "I just want you to know that what you are makes up for what you're not."

  He looked at me squarely. "Thank you," he said, and there was no joking this time. No facade of humor.

  He tapped the syringe as though deliberating on what I meant or waiting for me to say more. "I am not lying when I say that there is an energy in you. I sound crazy when I say it, I feel crazy when I think it, but there is just something about you..." he stopped. "I have never felt safer in my life."

  He looked down and, eventually, used the needle to puncture his skin, a speck of blood poured, and then he was in bliss, and I was beside him.

  I touched the dimple on his cheek, and he smiled, kissed my hand, his rough beard scratching my tender inner wrist like a burning perfume. I slid my hand down his neck, touched the inner lines of his collarbone and remarked how flawless his pale skin was, noted the sparse freckles about his shoulders. I placed my palm against his abdomen, and he grabbed my hand.

  "Cold," he said with closed eyes.

  I pulled his feet up onto the couch, laid him out on his side so that his back was against the sofa's back. I took my fingers and pressed against the needle tear.

  Eventually, I put another log on the fire and curled up next to him, felt him breathe in my hair, felt his cold feet against mine. And then, soon, I too drifted away.

  A noise startled me. My eyes shot open.

  A man in black stood between me and the bright fire.

  I turned my head up quickly.

  "Shhhhh," he said quietly and brought a finger to his mouth. There were two others in Patrick's living room.

  I recognized all three of them. Not from the old days. They were the new ones - the ones who had taken me the night of Patrick's party and needed my help in searching for their unknown client.

  I peered into the eyes of the man I had talked to only three weeks before, and they sparkled like cats' eyes. He pointed to the door of the loft.

  "It's time," he whispered.

  Chapter 29

  THE MASTER

  I remember the lemon tasted particularly sweet that day.

  I remember just how the curtains parted to let the sunshine through, into the white bedroom.

  How delicious the sounds of my footsteps were, going down the hall.

  How the greenhouse's flowers collided like paints.

  There were saints in every breath.

  What I mean is, I knew exactly what I would do.

  It was noon when I made my way back through the forest with the thin trees, taking the same path as the one I had treaded under Cyrus's command.

  This time, I carried things with me - things that I knew the bright man might want.

  When I made it to the porch of the Victorian-looking home, I saw it for what it was, not what it was made to appear, and when I stepped into the empty living area, with its one chair and the one being residing in it, I recognized that the man with lightning in his body was not sick. He was trapped.

  He turned his head to look at me and smiled. "Back, are we?"

  "Of course," I said.

  "Come to try and kill me again?"

  "Never."

  I dropped my backpack on the floor, and a metallic clunk! resounded.

  "I was wrong about you," I whispered.

  The man peered at the bag on the floor and began uncurling himself from the soft chair. "You are not the only one who is surprised."

  I told him, walking just a few steps about the empty den, "I asked myself, why doesn't that man do something? Why doesn't he fly out into the night and destroy Cyrus and all of his followers and save me? Why does he cut pieces of himself off and send them out into the world in people that are sent his way? And then I realized..."

  But I did not finish the thought. Instead, I returned to my bag, stooped, and opened it. I brought out an urn and set it before him. "Roland," I said.

  The man with stars in his body stood from his chair, and he dropped his blanket into the seat. He strode to me with a determined step, his body looking strong and lithe suddenly, the lightning in his veins burning brilliantly.

  He touched the urn slowly, held it gracefully, and brought it to himself. He twisted the lid off and peered within. His black eyes darted to me and stared.

  "They kept me in the basement until his body was dust. I couldn't bring him back. I tried.

  "But at least now Roland isn't there to die Cyrus's deaths for him anymore. He is finally at peace."

  I pulled the second object out of the bag. "I realized, though, long after I had left, long after I had resurrected the first ones with what you gave me, that these rooms are white." I looked about me. "All of them are as white as the rooms in Cyrus's."

  I shook my head. "The box has been here before... or one like it. And this place... it isn't your home. It's your prison." Within my palms, I held the red velvet creature - Cyrus's prized possession. I had stolen it from him easily, for he had over-estimated my weakness, my depression at losing Roland; he had also under-estimated my sex. As soon as he told me he never thought of me as a woman, I knew it was a lie.

  As I stood in the room with the brilliant stranger, I could have sworn I felt the box breathe.

  "I do not think," I continued, "that this is the only box in the world. I do not think Cyrus is the only man who believes he's God. But I do believe you do away with them - all these monstrous things and people." I looked at the brilliant strikes in his flesh, the fire that smoldered inside him. "If there's anyone in the world that can burn the damned thing, it's you. If there ever was a place where these things were destroyed," I looked about the white home again, "this is it."

  I stood from the bag on the floor and took a step towards him, so that we were only a foot apart. "And if I were Cyrus, and had managed to find a way to lock up something like you inside a place like this, if that is indeed what he has done, I'd make sure I left the key where no other person in the world could look without going insane."

  I placed the box in the brilliantine stranger's warm hands. "I cannot do it on my own," I whispered. "I cannot kill him."

  "I know," he said, and I thought I saw a smile begin at the edge of his lips.

  "That is why I started searching my mind for anyone I knew who could and would be willing to do what I cannot. All I could think of was you.

  "I realized it made no sense why you had not killed him. I was trapped from seeing the truth. You were trapped from making me see."

  The man eyed the box and set it, as well as the urn in his right hand, on the floor gently. When he righted himself, I promised him, "I will do whatever you ask."

  He placed a hand on either of my shoulders and brought me close. "After this ends, you are not going to be on this island anymore. Where you will be, there are no men who can resurrect themselves, there are none who can kill people with a word, none who can us
e boxes to destroy people's minds. There are no men with lightning in their veins. Most likely, we will never cross paths again. Where we are is a quilting point beyond the norms of humanity. But you will never lose what I gave you."

  I nodded to him as he spoke, and I could feel a warmth and tenderness enter me as he touched my arms. "Even while you are out there, and a normality sinks in far kinder and simpler than anything you have ever experienced, you will carry a piece of this with you, into that normal world. I want that this should help you.

  "You were not wrong about me. I can and will kill him. I will destroy all of them. But only on the condition that you will never try to bring it back. I must know you can let it be, and that when you do resurrect souls from death, it will never be to revive such a world as where you have lived. You must promise me."

  "I swear," I said. "I would never want this again."

  "And above all, you must not become like him."

  "You mean Cyrus?" I asked. He nodded. I almost laughed. "Never."

  "Because you are not wrong," he said. "There are other boxes, and they offer the most wondrous of things. It is too easy to lose oneself in this world. It is too easy to be trapped."

  I assented and swallowed hard as he gave one curt nod, stepped away from me, and picked up Cyrus's box from the floor. "You should go now," he said. I did as he asked, only looking back once.

  He was inspecting the box, his body beginning to shine.

  Before I went to the police station, before I confessed it all and stood in their simple cream hallways with my bruises and scars, I stopped at the edge of Cyrus's property to see if things had changed. For the longest time, it looked no different to me, and I feared that it never would be.

  Then, in one of the windows, like the smallest flake of a beginning snow, I saw one brief flash of light. Then in all the windows there were flashes, like a lightning storm had broken out inside, and then finally fire could be seen from the roof.

  They are dying, I thought, all of them, finally. I was correct, for the most part... except that, as I would later discover, there was one important person missing. Alex was not there and would escape it all.

  Where I sat in the car, there was the faint smell of blood, a little bone. But on that property, near these woods, that was not unusual. Not a soul could have understood the difference.

  If one had cared to listen, though, just the right distance away, he would have heard it. The high-pitched squeal, not unlike that of a drill, but just heightened somehow, as though it belonged in a slaughterhouse. But then again, on that property, near those woods, in that city, not a soul may have understood the difference.

  But I understood. And my heart was warmed.

  Chapter 30

  WELCOME

  I am free.

  I fear, yes. I am so lucky to fear.

  And taste it.

  And eat it.

  And live meaning.

  I remind myself of these things as I sit here, in the car. They are driving me, to where I don't know. Perhaps to hell. Yes, that would be nice. Anything is nice tonight. I will make it so.

  For I am everything and nothing. Alive and dead. Full circle. And nothing will break me anymore.

  What is that sound? Is it my heart? How slow it did beat, but now it quickens.

  I am thirsty again. The old wants course through me. I thought they were gone, but they have arrived on a silver platter, and a demon points to the ones I chew.

  Something is out there. It glistens in the night of ice and chain and blood, and my body tightens as though Patrick is near, but he sleeps, and I am far away. But we are all together, we are always together. I know that now. A bullet, a knife, a wound, a coffin, they will not separate me from the world.

  The car pulls into a drive, and we exit.

  Where are we? I search. It is the woods, and yet we stand before a club as though in a city full of restaurants, businesses, and blushing people in the cold. But we are not in a full-fledged city. We are nowhere, and yet here it is - a building, so steep and deep.

  We enter that building, and there is a long dark hall in which a fat black man sits on a stool, and when we arrive, he stands. There are five of us, and four move on ahead, but the youngest one stays with me, this man named Asher, and he holds me still while the bouncer takes out two markers.

  The first marker is black. My head is pushed to the side, and I feel the marker's tip against my skin, crawling up and down, then side to side, as the black man pushes it against me.

  "What are you marking me for?" I ask, but he does not respond.

  Another marker he takes, after he blows warm breaths upon me like a wolf, and he marks me just the same, covering his previous tracks, but what color of this marker is, I cannot tell. It smells different. And then this smudging ends.

  "Come," Asher tells me, and I move forward, behind him, through a doorway, into yet another dark hall.

  This new hallway has black lights and a mirror at the end, and when I see myself in the purple luminescence, I remark that on my skin is a glowing cross that covers my neck from jaw to collar. It is haphazard and slanted, but a cross nonetheless, and though I stoop to inspect the blue-ish white fluorescence, Asher grabs me, and pulls me further in, and now I notice the bass and the fast music like I'm in a body with notes for blood.

  No more black lights. These lights are bright, and there are people everywhere, many naked, many in leather lingerie, and the floor below me illuminates them from below like mannequins, showing their sex, but these plastic figures move, beautiful as they are, and become grotesque as they brighten with red. I look below me and the floor, as white as it was, now squishes with red that flows as I walk, as though my very steps make it bleed. The crimson washes forward with the beat of the music, leading to the boy ahead of me like a red brick road.

  I touch my chest. Flowing through me is no longer the pulsation of my heart, but the beating of the bass that weights the air. It seeps into me, and it is too loud. I reach into my pockets and pull out my ear plugs. I stuff them into my ears, but it's as though I don't have them at all.

  I look round.

  Some people are fucking on tables. Some are drinking while they fuck at the bar. Others are on chains being led round like cattle or dogs, and the entire place speaks of a sex I do not know, have never had, will never understand.

  As I walk, following Asher before me, many close in, touching my neck, inspecting me, where the cross is branded in. They smile, knowingly. I want to ask them what it means, but then they grab me.

  A woman kisses me, and then Asher is pushing her back and pulling me forward to a larger, gaping room with no windows, but tall, tall vaulted ceilings.

  Three tiers of balconies surround me, filled to their brim with strange naked people and their raucous calls. They are watching me closely.

  I look round myself to inspect the scene. There are tables on the ground level filled with people in all manner of sexual release, and I look at them in the midst of this sex like they are animals, until the largest thing in the room catches my eye. It's so large I nearly miss it, hanging from the room on the wall across from me. This is not a secular group, I realize. Or, it is the most secular group.

  Across from me is a Christ crucified, but erect, a giant penis protruding in the midst of his struggles and pain. His head is upturned, his eyes distant, but he enjoys. Anyone can see how this wood is carved to be so. And I ask myself, where the fuck I am.

  That's when I notice there are other such crucifixion figures, but they lay on the floor, and women are pleasuring themselves with them.

  "Come on," I hear, and I look ahead across the too bright room to where Asher calls me. "Is this our man?" he yells to me, and he points. I can barely move my gawking eyes to where his finger leads me, but as I walk and the crowds move back, I see a head of white hair sitting in a chair at a table.

  He faces away from me, but from my vantage, it appears he holds a card hand. At the table with him are three members of
my group. They are talking, but as I approach, their eyes shift to me, and they quit speaking.

  I forget the music as the blonde man is forced to turn round, to see on whom their attention is placed. I hope to see Alex.

  He turns. It is not Alex, but I do know this man. It is Julian.

  The shock on his face is as great as how I feel, and I walk to him carefully, making sure that the table resides between us. "A blast from the fucking past," Julian says. "You're supposed to be dead."

  I moved my hands out, motioning towards the hell around me. "I think I am."

  Julian smiles, his smile fades, and he looks to the leader of this group that has brought me. "Jas, you told me she was dead."

  I wondered at that name. Jas? But the man he looks to only turns to me and says, "Is this him?" I shake my head.

  "No," I say. "But he's as good as Alex. He'll get you to the man you want just the same. The people you want." That's when I notice that Julian as well has a cross painted on his neck.

  "What do these mean?" I yell to him under the flashing lights and music, pointing to my neck and his.

  Julian smiles, and he does not hesitate. "That the club permits us one victim." He sucks his teeth as though cleaning them of sugar. "It also means that if we die, no one will ever know. They have an incinerator." And it seems he sighs and resigns himself, that he has made a connection I have not, but there is so much to take in.

  "You're fucking kind of club," I say, and I sweep my eyes across the expanse. The five men that have brought me here are conversing amongst themselves. They call another man over, and they speak with him.

  In the meantime, two very large and intimidating bouncers lift Julian from his chair and hold him. I notice that Julian is well built, but not large. Still, he has grown since the last time we spoke - the night when the box spoke to me.

  I wonder if I look different to him as well.

  Then Asher is there with me, and the music has stopped, and the lights have stopped flashing. In the instant silence, the crowd of people scream in wild roars. They are exhilarated.